Inside the Billion Dollar Celebrity Impersonation Scam
From the article:
I learned from talking to West, the California prosecutor, that the Keanu Reeves scammer I was communicating with as Linda was likely a non-native English speaker using AI voice technology to impersonate Reeves. He is probably a victim himself, likely based in Southeast Asia. He may have found himself messaging a fake gray-haired lady in California who loves Keanu Reeves after responding to a seemingly legitimate job listing in a country like Thailand. When he went to the job interview, human traffickers would have kidnapped him, confiscated his passport, brought him across the border into Myanmar, Cambodia or Laos and imprisoned him in a compound, where he works 16-hour days reading from scripts written by experts in human psychology. “This is industrialized scam,” says West, who has created an international law enforcement coalition called Operation Shamrock to try to shut down these types of large-scale frauds. “It’s a growing industry, and it’s growing because it works.”
Offsite Linkby Anonymous | reply 5 | July 9, 2025 5:52 PM
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“Cuz for a long time I’ve never had anyone been real and truthful to me, it hurts my heart deep down Linda.”
Offsite Linkby Anonymous | reply 1 | July 9, 2025 4:24 PM
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How stupid are these people?
by Anonymous | reply 2 | July 9, 2025 4:35 PM
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I part where the woman who paid thousands to “Kevin Costner” is sitting in a lonely hotel room where they’re finally going to meet… and “he” texts her a photo of a crashed car on the highway saying he’s been in an accident. Cringe…
by Anonymous | reply 3 | July 9, 2025 4:38 PM
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And now she’s moved on to another scammer.
The hot/young/sexy babes scammers who target middle aged men, I mean that is kinda believable. Plenty of east European/Russian/Asian women do green card marriages here. But Hollywood actors and middle aged women is not REMOTELY believable.
by Anonymous | reply 4 | July 9, 2025 5:17 PM
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This is an illuminating and sad story.
Within minutes of the writer setting up a sad sack profile, she's contacted by "celebrities" who need bitcoin and gift cards. It's really hard for me to see how anyone could fall for this, but they do.
by Anonymous | reply 5 | July 9, 2025 5:52 PM
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